Seeking
by Ilantia Zand
Summary: The title has nothing to do with it, I was just braindead for one. Most of the crew from FF7 are in this. There's a rather interesting twist at the end... when I get to it. You can have more when you ask for it. I hope you like it. Nice descriptions, I th
1. Chapter One: Cloud

Chapter One- Cloud  
  
The corridor was dark. The door at the end were heavy oak, once polished, now scratched and dull. The stained glass windows were faded, colourless, and one was shattered beyond repair, cracked with pieces littering the wide grey steps outside. Inside, a small patch of light was cast on the black marble floor. There was a thick layer of dust over everything.  
  
The floor, skirting board, a small table and a broken lamp, were all slightly grey and furry. Doors led off on either side. Double doors, single doors. Cupboard doors. Niches in the wall which once held elegant statues, and now were home to spiders and their gossamer webs. A circular opening at the end, with a broad staircase covered in mouldy red carpet that opened into a landing on the 3 room second floor, then curved away, to either side, leading presumably to a third above the high-ceilinged first.   
  
That was all that could be seen from the hallway, the doors were shut, brassy handles now also dust coated. Behind the staircase, there was shadow. A single door was set in the wall, where nobody would see it unless they chanced to stray behind the main stairway. A pale figure slumped against it, knees up, head tilted back just beneath the handle.   
  
He- it was a man- was wearing loose black pants, with deep pockets (his left hand was in one) and chunky combat or hiking boots. Their top was blue, collared and sleeveless, and they had a broad belt, and wrist and shoulder armour. Their right arm, pale and bare, trailed loosely down to the ground where it was limply curled around the hilt of a huge sword.  
  
Two small indentations near the grip, which glowed dully, empty. The blade itself was a decent length, which was not unusual, but was almost impossibly wide. It resembled loosely a gargantuan butchers' chopping knife. Their neck was tilted back, revealing pale, taut skin that arced gracefully up to a firm chin, with prounounced jawbones, and large, shallow eye sockets, with close-lidded eyes. Tousled ash-blonde hair spiked in an ungainly way across the back and top of his head, slightly squashed as he leaned against the door, and fell in bangs across his face and neck.  
  
His eyelids fluttered, then opened. Shockwave-blue eyes regarded the shadows, pupils widening rapidly to adjust to the dimness of the nook. Above and in front of him, the lower side of the staircase was visible, making him feel queasy, as if he were on the ceiling looking down on stairs. As he stood up, this feeling was quickly relieved as one of pain took its place when he hit his head on the door handle.  
  
A slight wince, then light footfalls, raising minute puffs of dust as he circled around, hand now clasped tightly around the sword. He whirled to the left as he came out, expecting to see someone on the stairs. No-one. The corridor was empty, there was only he. And dust and carpet mould, to befriend the shadows. A beam of light at the end of the corridor drew him to it. Just a thin shaft, snaking through the hole in the begrimed window that hit the floor making it gleam blackly in contrast to the dusty gray of the rest.   
  
He stepped forward, passing through the beam, and then blocking it completely as he bent over slightly and put his face up to the hole. Outside, he could see a long gravel path twisting gently down to wrought iron gates. On either side, there were tangled weeds, dead trees. A once beautiful place, now fallen to ruins.   
  
It felt strangely familiar, the gardens, the hall. But he knew he had never seen it before. Anyway, where-  
  
"-Am I?"  
  
His voice sounded out, too loud in the stillness. Only then did he notice, that apart from the birds beyond the gates, there was no sound. He winced. The echo was muffled by the dust. He reached for the handle, but then stopped. He didn't know why, but he was inclined to linger in this place. He didn't want to leave, at all. He shook his head, blond hair sweeping across his forehead in the motion.  
  
"Who am I?"  
  
His voice was a mere whisper this time, an audible reminder to himself that he had a voice. That felt familiar. Had he asked it before? He slid slowly down to sit on the floor again, and lowered his eyelids, sitting in the same position as before, eyes shut again.  
  
"Who.. What am I? Human. What... what number am I?"  
  
That didn't make sense. He pushed the question away. Concentrating on the bigger things first. Meaningless babble could wait until he was less confused.  
  
"Where am I. Who am I. What a muddle. I should go outside and lie down, watch the birds in the blue, and the clouds."  
  
One eye snapped open at that, and looked upwards, at the door.  
  
"That. That is my name. Cloud. What a funny name... I wonder why I was called that. I must have had a funny mother."  
  
He shook his head, almost violently this time as the other eye opened. His hair bounced around, and he stood up. He knew he was rambling. He was too confused. He turned away from the front door, and to the first door on his right. A single door. Wood, plain, dusty handle. Nothing interesting.  
  
"I am Cloud Strife" 


	2. Chapter Two: Tifa

Chapter Two- Tifa  
  
The room was dusty, the carpet beginning to rot. The couch was dusty, but not too mouldy. The bookshelf was bare, and dusty. The lampshade moth-eaten, the vase broken. The girl on the couch was asleep. She stretched.  
  
Her eyes opened, reddish brown, deep and kind. Her hair was also brown, but darker than her eyes, the same as her eyebrows and her long fine lashes. She wore it long, just below the waist, and loosely tied near the end, just to keep it out of her face. Her fringe flopped over the right side of her face, she pushed it back behind her ears, but it just slid back.  
  
She side, giving up on that. She kicked her long legs off the couch to stand up, shorts, socks and boots and all, and rose to her toes, stretching again. The shorts were too loose. She must have lost weight recently. But they didn't fall thankfully, she had suspenders looped across her shoulders over a white singlet top. The straps rubbed against her bare midriff and she scowled.  
  
"...need a new top miss lockhart. Get yourself one."  
  
She scratched the inside of her elbow, and gazed around. Where was she? She regarded the room- there were two doors, and one boarded up window. She picked the door to the side of the window, not the one opposite. It was a really boring door, through which she could see a room almost exactly like the one she was in, but in much better condition.  
  
There was a shape huddled on the couch, under a dirty blanket. A tousled rope of loosely curled chestnut hair cascaded over the figure's (presumably a girl) shoulders. Tifa couldn't see her face. She walked over and sat on the floor nearby, leaning against the bookshelf and closed her eyes. She wouldn't wake them up, just wait awhile... 


	3. Chapter Three: Aeris

Chapter Three- Aeris  
  
The girl opened her eyes. She was still in the old room. She had woken a few hours before, not knowing where she was or why she was there, or who she was. She didn't remember ANYTHING. She had pulled a blanket off the floor and over herself and gone back to sleep, as her head was woozy and she wasn't yet ready to explore.   
  
This time she rolled over, pushing the blanket back to the floor. Then she froze. There was another girl sitting just a few metres away. She blinked and smiled timidly.  
  
"Hello? Do you know where we are?"  
  
The other shook her head. And grinned back.  
  
"No idea. But it's good to know I'm not the only one here. I'm Tifa by the way, Tifa Lockhart. Who'r you?"  
  
"I... don't know what my name is. I can't remember."  
  
Tifa blinked, and appeared to be thinking.  
  
"That's so weird. I can't remember anything either. Except my name and stuff. Well, you need a name I guess. How about... uh... Aeris? That's an ok name."  
  
Aeris nodded. It seemed.. right somehow. If she was gonna pick a name, that would be as good as any. Something about Tifa felt familiar, but she didn't know what. Aeris smiled.  
  
"Ok. Thankyou. I like that name. But.. I'd still really like to know where we are..."  
  
She sighed as she gazed round the decrepit room. What a miserable place... There were two doors leading out of the room.  
  
"Have you been here long Tifa? I mean... do you know your way around?"  
  
"Nah.. I woke up here about an hour back. I came through that door. So.. I guess we go that way."  
  
She pointed to the other door and stood up, holding out her hand. Aeris grabbed it and pulled herself up, then let go, and walked towards the door. She turned her head back.   
  
"Are you coming?"  
  
Tifa nodded, and half jogged up. She grasped the handle, turned, and pushed. The door swung open, creaking slightly in protest. They stepped out into a hallway. The floor was black marble, but coated in dust. There were doors all along. To their left, two doors down at the end of the corridor, was a door with a broken window. Obviously the front entrance. To their right, was a large circular chamber, and a broad staircase.  
  
Aeris looked at the door at the end. She didn't feel like leaving yet, she wanted to explore. She stepped forward, and opened the door in front. There was nothing much in there. It looked pretty much like the ones they had woken up in, but there were less shelves and more chairs.  
  
"Tifa... I don't think theres anything interesting here. Let's see whats up the stairs."  
  
Tifa paused, looking towards the entrance, then shrugged and headed to the stairs. They could easily fit 4 people abreast at the top, maybe 10 at the bottom. The room curved away behind them, but there was only shadow there. They were covered in mouldy red carpet that once would have been very rich. This was an important place once, whatever it was. The two girls simultaneously stepped onto the stairs and were halfway up when somebody called out. 


	4. Chapter Four: Cloud

Chapter Four- Cloud   
  
Cloud stepped into the room and looked around, shutting the door behind him. There was a couch in front of him that looked as though it may once have been comfortable, a couple of chairs and a table and a broken vase. The lampshade was decrepit, the window boarded over.   
  
The couch was dinted in the middle, as if someone had recently been lying on it, and there were disturbances in the dust. He looked a bit more closely at them. No, they weren't distubances, they were footsteps. Maybe they were his, from before he fell asleep? No... they were boot prints, but when he turned around to look at those he had just made, he saw his own were substantially larger.   
  
So there was someone else here. He turned left, following the footsteps into the next room. There was a blanket on the couch, and another set of footsteps. The door to his left, which would lead to the hall, was closed.   
  
"..let's see what's up the stairs"   
A girls voice. His imagination maybe? He half ran to the door, opened it and stepped through swiftly, turning to the right, to the staircase. Two people were standing there, walking up to the landing.   
  
"Hey! Wait!"  
Cloud stepped into the middle of the corridor, skidding slightly on the dust. The two girls on the stairs turned around, surprised to see him. They exchanged a glance and the dark haired girls eyes focused on his sword for a moment before returning to his face.   
  
Her legs bent slightly, her hands coming up defensively. A martial artist. The other girl, the one in the pink dress, reached her hand out automatically, grasping at shoulder height for something that was no longer there.   
  
Green eyes locked with his, searching, calculating. Red eyes watched for the tension in a single muscle to change, anticipating attack.   
  
"Who are you? What are you doing here?"  
"Cloud... Cloud Strife... I don't know why I'm here.. I don't even know where here is..."   
They seemed to relax slightly.   
  
"damn. Neither do we."  
The green eyed girl spoke then, her voice somewhat softer than the other. She moved down the stairs towards him a couple of steps and sat down.   
  
"Well thats just great. Three of us, and no one knows where we are"  
Cloud slung the massive sword over his shoulder. They seemed okay, and weren't really armed. He walked the rest of the distance down the corridor, wondering what was behind all the doors.   
  
"If you?e looking for the exit, its there."  
He gestured over his shoulder. The two girls shook their head, hair waving around their faces.   
  
"uh-uh. If we?e in here, we might as well take a look around. Besides, there might be other people in here. I'm Tifa by the way... this is Aeris."  
"Pleased to meet you."  
"Yeah. I'm kinda glad I? not the only one here for some reason..."   
He looked at them. He didn't recognise them, but for some reason he felt comfortable, almost familiar with them. He looked up the staircase.   
  
" I guess... I guess we go that way."   
The two girls nodded. Tifa turned and slowly walked up the remaining stairs, Aeris stood up and followed, Cloud behind her. At the top of the stairs he turned back for a moment, looking at the door to the outside world. Not yet.   
  
The carpet on the landing was in better condition, but not much. Maybe it was newer. Well, was newer before the house was abandoned. Now it was all old. The three doors in front of them were much the same as the entrance. Double, brass handled oak, only without the leadlights. Tifa looked at the handle speculatively, Aeris hesitated, so Cloud stepped between them and pushed it open.   
  
It was a bedroom, white linen double bed with a canopy in the centre of the left wall, a desk against the wall with the door they were entering, a cupboard next to the bed and a large bay window opposite the door. To the right the room which would have been perfectly square was walled partway down, and an open door displayed a spatious white bathroom.   
  
There was nobody in there. The girls wandered in, enchanted by the old fashioned room. It looked like it had been a princess' chamber, pulled directly out of the pages of a fairytale. Cloud, unimpressed, sat on the desk while the girls entered into the bathroom, making comments to each other on the size of the tub, the fancy taps and towel rails and the fireplace.   
  
Bored of watching them explore the bedroom when they started poking around in the white cupboard, Cloud shrugged to himself and left, throwing open the other doors on the landing. Boring. More bedrooms, only this time they weren't oriented in white, one was green, one was blue.   
  
What kind of peculiar person colour oriented their rooms differently from the rest of the house and also from each other? He snorted, exasperated, and sat down on the bed in the green room. He liked this one better for some reason. There was dust on the sheets, that wasn't surprising, but he noticed that the bedrooms were in better condition than the rest of the house so far.   
  
Standing up, he looked around. The window wasn't broken, because there were wooden blinds outside it. He opened the window and folded them up, and light streamed into the room from outside. In the distance he could see mountains and trees, and a cool breeze wrapped around his neck, blowing through his hair and into the room beyond.   
  
He liked this place for some reason. He could even live here. Maybe. After all, he reasoned, it wasn't like he had family waiting for him elsewhere. He continued his examination of the room. There were spiderwebs of course, spiders got everywhere, but the skirting board was intact. No mice above ground floor? That didn't make sense, but if no animals bigger than insects had got into the bedrooms that would explain why they were so clean.   
  
Well... relatively clean. He moved on to the bathroom. The bathtub was smoky glass, the floor and benchtops greeny marble. The taps and finishings were all silver. There was a table and what looked like a wine bar, as well as the fireplace. Whoever had built this house had certainly been well able to afford luxuries.   
  
He turned back into the bedroom then. The desktop was devoid of all but dust. The drawers contained paper, pens, a vase, a pair of spectacles and a paper fan. He closed them again fairly roughly and looked in the cupboard, mildly amused that he was as curious as the girls. There were mens clothes inside, fairly old fashioned ones, all rich looking. There were shoes, pants, shirts, hats, ties, jackets. The inside of the door was a full length mirror. Part of the closet seemed to be another closet. Like a cupboard within a cupboard. He opened the inner door and gaped.   
  
There were more clothes, but not old like the others. If the clothes he was wearing were modern then these... these were the future. Way into the future. Hundreds of thousands of years into the future. Everything seemed to glitter or shine, reflecting the light that now brightened the room. Silver and gold shirts and pants and shoes. Bizarre fashions. He wasn't sure if they were mens or ladies, but by the cut of the shirts he would say they were mens.   
  
There was a little key hanging from a hook on the inside of the inner door. Not quite sure why he was doing so, Cloud took it down, weighing it in his palm. He closed the inner door and locked it, slipping the key on its chain around his neck.   
  
"Cloud... There you are"   
Aeris' voice. There was a giggle. He turned around and practically fell over from shock, not believing his eyes. 


	5. Chapter Five: Sephiroth

Chapter Five- Sephiroth   
  
Glowing green eyes opened slowly, intense gaze piercing the dark. He wasn? alone any longer. There were people in the house. Down the stairs. He could hear them shouting and arguing. A girl and a boy. The male voice was sarcastic, drawling, never getting emotional.   
  
The female voice was criticising, exasperated. He chuckled to himself at the idea of them trapped down there. They obviously hadn't found the door to the stairs yet. It was hidden.   
  
He stood up and moved silently across the floor so they wouldn't hear him. Not that they would have been able to anyway, not over their own voices. He stared into the dark, bored, annoyed. He could go down, but he didn't feel like it yet. Up here he was alone with himself.   
  
Sephiroth stopped pacing. At the least, he could do something. Long silver hair swayed slightly as he gently, quietly shut the hatch to the staircase. Then he walked over to the window. There was a gleam of silver moving rapidly through the air, a metallic shimmer, and then there was a crunch.   
  
The boards over the window shattered under the pressure of the blow from the ridiculously long sword, and shafts of light dodged the splinters to fall upon the floor. Sephiroth sheathed his sword, and with a defined punch the planks of wood fell the long distance to the ground outside.   
  
Sunlight poured into the room, and a breeze stirred up the dust, twirling it round and carrying it out the window with a minimal of coaxing from the black coated man. He put the materia back into his pocket and looked at the dust free room. The spiders could stay, he didn't care.   
  
There was a bathroom, an unimpressive bed, a small closet and a smaller table, the remains of a rug (which followed the planks out the window) and for some reason completely unknown to him, crates of dried longlife food. He stared at them, blinking, stunned for a moment. What a ridiculous thing to keep in an attic.   
  
He glared at the hatch to the stairs for a moment, then looked into the far corner. There was still some dust here, and a much smaller window. This one was covered not boarded. He pushed the cover to the side, and light entered this corner of the room. A contemptous kick sent most of the dust out the window. There was a large chest tucked into the corner.   
  
The lock was big and impressive looking, but a kick and a couple of bored slashes from the sword broke it easily enough. He stared at it incredulously. And then quite suddenly he laughed, a short sharp noise of disbelief. It was filled with glassware and crockery, all nicely wrapped to prevent breakage, and rolls of cutlery banded together. Of all the stupid...   
  
It was heavy. He picked it up almost effortlessly and deposited it on the hatch. Now all he had to do was wait for the noisy people downstairs to leave. He returned to the window and stared at the distant mountains, smiling ever so slightly to himself. 


End file.
